i go in and out of putting down words and images. lately words have abounded. and suddenly, now color and shape and line and space and the like.
14.10.12
families
at school this week we drew family portraits. (someone's guess as to what a family portrait might be was "a family sitting on a porch".)
such a miraculous thing to see how what they make of a direct prompt. these sorts of things are usually not my thing, i don't like to guide the Littles through tasks where they make something recognizable. but in this circumstance, owing to a larger project in the near future, it had to be done (to my dislike.) but! beautiful things happened, and i silently cheered on those who put down abstracted shapes and broken lines to represent family members because of the way those people felt and seemed.
so we have energies and personalities translated into lines and colors. something adults pay tuition and hard sweat to learn, or to reconnect with, struggling all the while. but those under five years old? for them it just flows.
such a miraculous thing to see how what they make of a direct prompt. these sorts of things are usually not my thing, i don't like to guide the Littles through tasks where they make something recognizable. but in this circumstance, owing to a larger project in the near future, it had to be done (to my dislike.) but! beautiful things happened, and i silently cheered on those who put down abstracted shapes and broken lines to represent family members because of the way those people felt and seemed.
so we have energies and personalities translated into lines and colors. something adults pay tuition and hard sweat to learn, or to reconnect with, struggling all the while. but those under five years old? for them it just flows.
on "Crunch".
having read this gem in the New Yorker recently, I decided to go out and try for myself this crazy, new fangled apple. one they invented. invented.
genetically modifying plants aside, it is a strange and thrilling thing to eat something whose every facet, character, fault, victory and blemish were decided on, altered, and then presented in all its waxy glory.
groups of people sat with sharp pencils, little lined cards and spitting cups, to bite, chew and discard many apples before the Sweetango. this one, too soft. this? too hard. what about this? too sour, too sweet, too weak, too meek, too showy, not enough confidence, a narcissist, too histrionic, not good looking enough, too fat, too thin, too heavy, too round, foreign, awkward, bitter, a victim. these kinds of things, i'm sure.
and so i took myself into the Regular Old grocery (where, it is true, I am not a frequent shopper,) pleased to find, literally glowing in a halo of halogen and carnuba wax, the Sweetangos.
lordy.
it was the biggest thing i have ever eaten. slightly mealy to the touch. but. in the mouth? as promised, so juicy it wet the chin, and crunch enough to momentarily drown out the radio. as for the taste? i can't say i remember. i was enraptured by the crunch and the juice. apparently the taste wasn't figured into the modifying equation. perhaps they knew we'd be slightly embarassed at first by now knowing how to break the skin. the surface was so wide and taut and curved. and then be so blown over by the feel of the thing we'd forget to taste it. (or perhaps i have so long snubbed conventional and oversized fruit I forget that this is a common problem with mainsteam produce.) either way, the Sweetango. stunning and forgettable and somewhat difficult to wrangle.
genetically modifying plants aside, it is a strange and thrilling thing to eat something whose every facet, character, fault, victory and blemish were decided on, altered, and then presented in all its waxy glory.
groups of people sat with sharp pencils, little lined cards and spitting cups, to bite, chew and discard many apples before the Sweetango. this one, too soft. this? too hard. what about this? too sour, too sweet, too weak, too meek, too showy, not enough confidence, a narcissist, too histrionic, not good looking enough, too fat, too thin, too heavy, too round, foreign, awkward, bitter, a victim. these kinds of things, i'm sure.
and so i took myself into the Regular Old grocery (where, it is true, I am not a frequent shopper,) pleased to find, literally glowing in a halo of halogen and carnuba wax, the Sweetangos.
lordy.
it was the biggest thing i have ever eaten. slightly mealy to the touch. but. in the mouth? as promised, so juicy it wet the chin, and crunch enough to momentarily drown out the radio. as for the taste? i can't say i remember. i was enraptured by the crunch and the juice. apparently the taste wasn't figured into the modifying equation. perhaps they knew we'd be slightly embarassed at first by now knowing how to break the skin. the surface was so wide and taut and curved. and then be so blown over by the feel of the thing we'd forget to taste it. (or perhaps i have so long snubbed conventional and oversized fruit I forget that this is a common problem with mainsteam produce.) either way, the Sweetango. stunning and forgettable and somewhat difficult to wrangle.
ungulates
at school we had a visitor. small for her size with great clouds of ether issuing from her nostrils and making all who saw her swoony and slow.
moose, despite their slowness and deliberate footing, often disrupt. partially because they are unpredictable- surprisingly agile, fierce, and fast; they will back slowly away when approached as often as charge.
as the earth moving machines and the newly relocated sift and rip at the moose's habitat, they are forced up, over and out of the small valleys and hills where they like it best. often when the weather begins to shift into cold and frost they will revisit old feeding grounds for food that has not yet frozen over. frequently they will shear and raze young cultivated shrubs and trees to sticks to the great dismay of their gardeners.
it is a hard balance we strike with them especially since moose, like most large and long living animals, are creatures of habit and will find a place they like and return again and again. when you see a moose in your yard, see that wide fringed swoop of grass where he made his bed by the foxglove plant, under the window, you will see it again. and over again.
dogs do not disrupt them terribly. like monkshood and oleander, we have inadvertently (though only to a very small degree,) domesticated a living thing that poses danger to us. the moose become used to the small shouting animals that come out of buildings, to the strange, hard surfaces that loop the land, to the troublesome heaps of plastic and wood that are left out among the tender bushes to be knocked over while grazing, spilling cushions across the ground. and yet when people come out, waving arms and making all different kinds of noises, a moose, especially with a calf, will become rewired. now stiffening, now crackling and shivering, the side of fur and force will run at any living thing it assumes is a threat. they are diligent. they are fast. they are excellent swimmers.
and so from time to time there are stories about some poor soul, trampled and crushed beneath the dainty feet of a thundering ungulate, to their peril (but likely not because they were innocently strolling by.) this is unusual really. likely the consequence of someone getting too close, or not recognizing the change in the moose and running away pellmell when he should. (here is that gem of wisdom we are so often confused by in dealing with animals. from which do we flee and at which do we make lots of noise, wave our arms and stomp? as i am told by Someone Who Knows a Great Deal, a moose, being an omnivore without a predatory instinct, responds most positively in sticky situations to being left to her own devices. swiftly. yes, turn your back and run, for a moose has no "chase" circuitry; it does not seek a meal from you, but peace and quiet. (as, i am sure, we all do, most irritably, from time to time.)
and this is why, i think, that when a volunteer from school sought to rid of playground of our visitor by running out in her high heels and yelling, the moose was suddenly on her feet, head down aiming herself forward and charging. because no one really likes to be disrupted from a quiet morning with steam and light and bending grass and leaves falling slowly to the ground, by a yell and a stomp. moose or otherwise.
moose, despite their slowness and deliberate footing, often disrupt. partially because they are unpredictable- surprisingly agile, fierce, and fast; they will back slowly away when approached as often as charge.
as the earth moving machines and the newly relocated sift and rip at the moose's habitat, they are forced up, over and out of the small valleys and hills where they like it best. often when the weather begins to shift into cold and frost they will revisit old feeding grounds for food that has not yet frozen over. frequently they will shear and raze young cultivated shrubs and trees to sticks to the great dismay of their gardeners.
it is a hard balance we strike with them especially since moose, like most large and long living animals, are creatures of habit and will find a place they like and return again and again. when you see a moose in your yard, see that wide fringed swoop of grass where he made his bed by the foxglove plant, under the window, you will see it again. and over again.
dogs do not disrupt them terribly. like monkshood and oleander, we have inadvertently (though only to a very small degree,) domesticated a living thing that poses danger to us. the moose become used to the small shouting animals that come out of buildings, to the strange, hard surfaces that loop the land, to the troublesome heaps of plastic and wood that are left out among the tender bushes to be knocked over while grazing, spilling cushions across the ground. and yet when people come out, waving arms and making all different kinds of noises, a moose, especially with a calf, will become rewired. now stiffening, now crackling and shivering, the side of fur and force will run at any living thing it assumes is a threat. they are diligent. they are fast. they are excellent swimmers.
and so from time to time there are stories about some poor soul, trampled and crushed beneath the dainty feet of a thundering ungulate, to their peril (but likely not because they were innocently strolling by.) this is unusual really. likely the consequence of someone getting too close, or not recognizing the change in the moose and running away pellmell when he should. (here is that gem of wisdom we are so often confused by in dealing with animals. from which do we flee and at which do we make lots of noise, wave our arms and stomp? as i am told by Someone Who Knows a Great Deal, a moose, being an omnivore without a predatory instinct, responds most positively in sticky situations to being left to her own devices. swiftly. yes, turn your back and run, for a moose has no "chase" circuitry; it does not seek a meal from you, but peace and quiet. (as, i am sure, we all do, most irritably, from time to time.)
and this is why, i think, that when a volunteer from school sought to rid of playground of our visitor by running out in her high heels and yelling, the moose was suddenly on her feet, head down aiming herself forward and charging. because no one really likes to be disrupted from a quiet morning with steam and light and bending grass and leaves falling slowly to the ground, by a yell and a stomp. moose or otherwise.
11.10.12
arrow poison
today, like a phoenix from ashes, rose the last glowing living thing from our flowerpots. monkshood (devil's helmet, leopard's bane, wolfsbane) is a beautiful plant, tall and leggy. fragile and wispy with delicate shadows and veins full of a most potent poison. pulling leaves without gloves will allow small amounts of poison to slowly soak through fingertips, ride up the arm and shake at the engine of the heart. any breaks in the skin and the sap will move all the more quickly, a fierce arrow with true aim. doses in any larger amounts will plunge us into death almost instantaneously and yet, when a weak sun rose and pierced frost and cold, these indigo petals are ones we keep close (at our door) and we know the Cold Dark is upon us when the last one sighs and tips out of life and into the bodies of its decaying brothers.
10.10.12
sea changes
A great deal of MFK Fisher's collective writing is devoted to sea change. Indeed her autobiographical work (The Gastronomical Me) casts those words over whole periods of her life without the use of details or qualifiers. Part of this, I suspect, is because she is traveling both with her husband and with death and two such companions must make a mess of time. Sea change then, is not just about crossing space and time through water, but about the way troubled times lump and mass themselves: squeezing the meaning out of language and reminding us that wide water often kills detail.
"...We were ghosts, then. Our lives as normal living humans had ended in the winter, in Delaware, with Chexbres' illness. And when we got word that we should go back to our old home in Switzerland and save what we could before war started, we went not so much for salvage, because possessions had no meaning any more to us, but because we were helpless to do anything else. We returned to the life that had been so real like fog, or smoke, caught in a current of air. We were very live ghosts, and drank and ate and saw and felt and made love better then ever before, with an intensity that seemed to detach us utterly from life. Everywhere there was a little of that feeling; the only difference was that we wree safely dead, and all the other people, that summer, were laughing and singing and drinking wine in a kind of catalepsy, or like a cancerous patient made happy with a magic combination of opiate before going into the operating theatre. We had finished with all that business, and they had it still to go through..."
(The Flaw, 1939. (The Gastronomical Me.) The Art of Eating, by MFK Fisher.)
While there is no sea voyage in my own future I do feel that the visual cues of autumn's descending will similarly blur detail leaving me with that same wavering feeling of beginning a new way, slow and watery. Not for any tactile reason, no concrete loss, life change, solid event. Rather just the sense of continuing in the natural world. I feel this way when the ground gets soft before getting very hard.
on light
the light is failing here. strange to find that this kind of dying, the annual kind, is a death of which we are not afraid. better words for what we are could be resolute, or stoic. knowing death is coming snaps close the fear blade. death now lets us savor light and time and warmth. we linger at windows, move our bodies into the beams that fall across the carpet.
all summer the trees blow green and nimble against our wall of windows. the light they cast is either invisible or immaterial, for lingering against it is something we rarely do. but now as the light thickens, slows, tips in where before it streamed and blew, we are taken aback. while we sadden we are nevertheless flush with gold. weak but solid. we notice. we sit up with our nerves unfurled and trembling. how many more days will we have before the limbs are bare? before our own limbs are covered and kept from the sharp and the cold to wait for spring. and how, how can we be longing for such a thing already?
3.10.12
lemon glut
with an abundance of lemons in the last week a kind of citrus panic set in. likely because it seems like lemons are never cheap. in the desert. we will pay 99 cents for a sad, dried fist of a lemon. California dwellers and those in the Mediterranean must balk at this. having themselves a glut of lemons, sometimes growing over into storm drains and onto neighbor's lawns. but here, there is something festive about 39 cents for a lemon. someone somewhere had a magical moment where every lemon picked left three more on the tree! lemons galore! fill your shopping trolley and then heave and squeak it out into your car. drive home with the car body scrapping the tires with weight and then wheelbarrow them into your tiny house.
and then?
that's the panicky part. what to do with so many lemons? they cannot be pureed and dried, or juiced with any real sense of goodness. (lemonade in october?) but they can be pickled and preserved! they can be persuaded into marmalade and they can be baked. and thank goodness for that. (more on preserving lemons later.)
this is a gem of a lemon tart recipe. and thank goodness for being smitten. thank goodness further for making use of a whole lemon! a few of them! not peeling and zesting. not cutting away flesh and pith. simply slicing into fine wheels, pitting and ending up with a lemon tart that convinces even non-dessert eaters, and those who do not believe in sweets, to sneakily place ever widening wedges of it onto their plates until the gleam of the tart pan's base shows and we must begin again. lordy.
and then?
that's the panicky part. what to do with so many lemons? they cannot be pureed and dried, or juiced with any real sense of goodness. (lemonade in october?) but they can be pickled and preserved! they can be persuaded into marmalade and they can be baked. and thank goodness for that. (more on preserving lemons later.)
this is a gem of a lemon tart recipe. and thank goodness for being smitten. thank goodness further for making use of a whole lemon! a few of them! not peeling and zesting. not cutting away flesh and pith. simply slicing into fine wheels, pitting and ending up with a lemon tart that convinces even non-dessert eaters, and those who do not believe in sweets, to sneakily place ever widening wedges of it onto their plates until the gleam of the tart pan's base shows and we must begin again. lordy.
et voila. and the rest happened so fast (bake, cool, slice, eat, repeat, wash tart pan.) that those pictures must wait, alas, for another day.
walks. soup.
with fall coming a new light approaches. a damp light, heavy and dense. when the dogs and i walk the land we cut through wind and light to make our way to high places. sometimes the feat is so great not even the warmth of the sun can settle our flapping breath or warm those places chilled and fearful from the work of simply putting one foot in front of the other. but there is certainly beauty abound.
the patina of a dying year. good for keeping secrets, planning adventures and conjuring up fierce hungers.
and when we are cold we go in for something hot.
this is potassium broth. a medley of many skins. roots, leaves. the protective and nourishing barriers between the earth and the things that nestle and thrive there. ayurvedic practitioners ask us to drink broths to restore the salt and water of our bodies. a kind of ocean kindling for our own secret seas. the most bolstering part of such mugfuls is perhaps that they come from such stoic and simple beginnings. and to nourish yourself on the minerally jackets of soil dwelling creatures seems the best way to part the veil of the year and enter in the decaying magic that autumn winks at us from our windows.
more scientifically, potassium broth (so called from the concoction of mineral-rich plant matter,) is a good and real source of electrolytes. frequently prescribed to the sick, the recovering, or those on the verge, potassium broth is a very bio-available way of replacing lost salts and fluids. those who are prone to cold would benefit from a knob of ginger here and perhaps a very small section of chili. parsnips and rutabagas add a sweetness for those in bitter places like heartbreak and overwork. and for the already overheated, serve this less than piping hot with something astringent and mild atop such as cilantro or mint leaves.
potassium broth (some percentages)
25% potato peelings
25% carrot peelings and whole chopped beets (with tails, not greens)
50% dark leafy greens (the tougher the better. think kale and turnip greens, not spinach. although this is fine and certainly better than lettuce.)
one leaf kombu or arame
sprinkling of celery seeds or Maine dulse sprinkles
cover all with water just to the chin, bring to a boil, turn down to low and simmer until the house swells and sighs and you can wait no longer for a cupful.
the patina of a dying year. good for keeping secrets, planning adventures and conjuring up fierce hungers.
and when we are cold we go in for something hot.
this is potassium broth. a medley of many skins. roots, leaves. the protective and nourishing barriers between the earth and the things that nestle and thrive there. ayurvedic practitioners ask us to drink broths to restore the salt and water of our bodies. a kind of ocean kindling for our own secret seas. the most bolstering part of such mugfuls is perhaps that they come from such stoic and simple beginnings. and to nourish yourself on the minerally jackets of soil dwelling creatures seems the best way to part the veil of the year and enter in the decaying magic that autumn winks at us from our windows.
more scientifically, potassium broth (so called from the concoction of mineral-rich plant matter,) is a good and real source of electrolytes. frequently prescribed to the sick, the recovering, or those on the verge, potassium broth is a very bio-available way of replacing lost salts and fluids. those who are prone to cold would benefit from a knob of ginger here and perhaps a very small section of chili. parsnips and rutabagas add a sweetness for those in bitter places like heartbreak and overwork. and for the already overheated, serve this less than piping hot with something astringent and mild atop such as cilantro or mint leaves.
potassium broth (some percentages)
25% potato peelings
25% carrot peelings and whole chopped beets (with tails, not greens)
50% dark leafy greens (the tougher the better. think kale and turnip greens, not spinach. although this is fine and certainly better than lettuce.)
one leaf kombu or arame
sprinkling of celery seeds or Maine dulse sprinkles
cover all with water just to the chin, bring to a boil, turn down to low and simmer until the house swells and sighs and you can wait no longer for a cupful.
new year at the end of the year
the new school year rang in. a while ago. somehow, despite leaving a clean and orderly classroom, major gutting and revamping had to be undertaken. perhaps it is because i entered halfway through the last school year and wandered into someone else's space. organized- fairly, clean - sort of, but mine? not. and having a week to decide how to a handle an 8 by 10 room, one third of it cabinets and counters, it was amazing how much was pulled from the guts of the tiny cupboards to be piled neatly and put back in. quite an undertaking.
but then the year folded in on itself as if the slow swoon and dive of summer never happened. and we are swiftly back to the old ways of the world. and familiarity in this sense was not so bad as 'coming back to work' can sound.
making the same old play dough.
and coming back into the evidence of the hands of the very small. and if such honesty and fearlessness is not humbling, then i am at loss with that word.
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